REPUBLICANISM, THE SOUL OF OUR CIVIC AND POLITICAL LIFE & LIMITATIONS OF POLITICAL BIPOLARITY
The vision here expresses itself against limitations in my own home country affecting the People’s creative output in political and economic thinking, and negatively affecting our relation to the World: (i.) this stifling duopolistic and monopolized bipolarity of U.S. party politics; (ii.) the Post-WWII Liberal World Order that is collapsing; (iii.) the “culture war” or hybrid war speeding this collapse; (iv.) the degeneration of civics education and our political language (a concern raised by Tocqueville even in the 1830s about the American people); and (v.) the structure and polemics underlying the dominant religious influences as addressed in the Age of the Rule of Faith series that limits our understanding about the historical relationship of religion to our civilization. I write not with enmity, but to warn to heed at a closed hour.
These limitations also negatively affect our sense of connection to ancient and classical roots and leads us to understand the real and abandoned value of the republican tradition. The American is known for its superficialities and materialism. If we cannot transcend those superficialities as a People in relation to religion, civic or political life, we cannot truly embody the republican ideal.
The republic requires a People that wants to mature, so I reject any need to simplify this for you. I want you to become fully acquainted with the ancient philosophical origins of republicanism — from the Stoa, the Pre-Socratics, its many other influences, and why many seem to not even know that the republican tradition exists, or what it is, particularly in the United States. In other countries, their education differs, and in some, the republican tradition and its iconography and story of struggle and sacrifice is still well-known by its citizens and inhabitants. The republican tradition is the soul of our political and civic life, and it transcends the destabilizing left-right spectrum (see The Political Spectrum is a Myth) we have become too familiar with. Republicanism is not an expression of racism, racial or ethnic identitarianism, oligarchy, the false populism of Trump and white nationalism, Christian nationalism, post-constitutionalism, Hitler’s NAZISM or Mussolini’s FASCISM.
The limitations in the modern political party bipolarity and understanding of religion as an example limit perspective, but there is a way out of this limitation by studying the past and the history of this tradition. Also, by studying the factors that contributed to its displacement by rival traditions that have claimed to supersede it, continue to copy its language, then claim to have invented (or represent) such notions of equality and freedom; or use the tradition to fight against its own principles while claiming its very name.
The Stoic philosophy and eclectic Stoa lay at the heart of republicanism and is irremovable, e.g., the ancient cosmological idea that in MAN exists divine potential and divine qualities; which was distorted through the developments into biogenetic racism in science during the Enlightenment (see Classical Republicanism and Stoicism refutes Racial Hierarchies). This is a vital distinction from any other political system, which tries to subordinate or claim republican principles. Despite excuses for the continuation of the legacy of chattel slavery, the U.S. founders believed in the former classical philosophical position, such as James Madison. The highest ideals in the language that frames our system of government (in the founders’ observations of ancient Republics and Democracy) cannot be understood nor truly embodied if this is ignored with indifference as mere antiquated beliefs. Citizens must carry them in truer practice. Do not depend on your mother, father, grandparents or “the goldilocks” politician to emerge for you. For the truly republican thinker, it is your duty to embody and transmit the maturing character and being that sustains ordered liberty against ignorance, stupidity, despair, hypocrisy, corruption and domination.